Maana Patel has become the first Indian female swimmer to qualify for the upcoming Tokyo Olympics through universality quota, confirmed Sports Authority of India (SAI) on Friday.
“Backstroke swimmer Maana Patel has become the 1st female and 3rd Indian swimmer to qualify for Tokyo 2020. I congratulate Maana, who qualified through Universality Quota. Well done!!,” tweeted Sports Minister Kiren Rijiju.
The Universality quota allows one male and one female competitor from a country to participate in the Olympics, provided no other swimmer from the same gender qualifies for the Games or receives a FINA invite based on his or her Olympic Selection time (B time).
The 21-year-old is a decorated athlete and has won gold medals in 50 backstroke and 200 metre backstroke and also at the National Games. She also clinched gold in 100 metre backstroke at the 60th National School Games (2015) breaking the national record in backstroke.
It was in 2015, that Maana Patel was selected for the Olympic Gold Quest. This event had marked the first time a swimmer was roped in.
Three years later in 2018, Patel secured three gold medals at the 72nd Senior National Aquatic Championships, and at the Senior Nationals in Thiruvananthapuram in 2018, Patel grabbed all the medals at the backstroke events.
Earlier, Sajan Prakash had scripted history to become the first-ever Indian swimmer to breach the ‘A’ Olympic qualification time by clocking 1:56:38 seconds in the men’s 200m butterfly event. The 27-year-old made the Tokyo Games ‘A’ standard, set at 1:56.48 seconds, by 0.10 seconds at the FINA-accredited Olympic qualifier.
